Darwin developed the theory of se
xual selection to explain why the animal world abounds in stunning beauty\
, from the brilliant colors of butterflies and fishes to the songs of bird
s and frogs. He argued that animals have “a taste for the beautiful” that
drives their potential mates to evolve features that make them more sexual
ly attractive and reproductively successful. But if Darwin explained wh
y sexual beauty evolved in animals\, he struggled to understand how
. In A Taste for the Beautiful\, Michael Ryan\, one o
f the world’s leading authorities on animal behavior\, tells the remarkabl
e story of how he and other scientists have taken up where Darwin left off
and transformed our understanding of sexual selection\, shedding new ligh
t on human behavior in the process.

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Drawing on cutting-edge work i
n neuroscience and evolutionary biology\, as well as his own important stu
dies of the tiny Túngara frog deep in the jungles of Panama\, Ryan explore
s the key questions: Why do animals perceive certain traits as beautiful a
nd others not? Do animals have an inherent sexual aesthetic and\, if so\,
where is it rooted? Ryan argues that the answers to these questions lie in
the brain—particularly of females\, who act as biological puppeteers\, sp
urring the development of beautiful traits in males. This theory of how se
xual beauty evolves explains its astonishing diversity and provides new in
sights about the degree to which our own perception of beauty resembles th
at of other animals.

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Vividly written and filled with fascinating s
tories\, A Taste for the Beautiful will change how you think about
beauty and attraction.

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Michael J. Ryan is the Cla
rk Hubbs Regents Professor in Zoology at the University of Texas and a Sen
ior Research Associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in P
anama. He is a leading researcher in the fields of sexual selection\, mate
choice\, and animal communication. He lives in Austin\, Texas.